evm_december-2023 - 17

STRATEGY
groups every year, so just because a group
has been in San Francisco for
several
years doesn't guarantee that it'll be back.
What's changed in the past few years is that
other cities have been able to focus on the
things that we can't change easily. We can't
easily change the size of our hotels. Our
downtown footprint is what it is. Our cost
of labor and benefits are where they are.
Other cities such as Las Vegas are
able to compete against the things that
we struggle with, which is, if you come
to San Francisco, you're going to need to
use 10, 20 or 30 hotels. If you're a large
convention and you go to Las Vegas, you
may only have to use two. In the past few
years, [other markets] have been able to be
more competitive when bidding against
us. Events book, they change dates, and
then sometimes they cancel as a matter
of course. And while we never like to
lose a piece of business, if we do, we
try to replace that business with another
booking.
There's also no shortage of leads for
future dates for us. And I think that's
where there's a perception that everybody
is pulling out of San Francisco. That is not
true. We have no issues pulling business
in. It's the short-term cancellations that
we've had to deal with that are harder
for us to replace because that booking
window has passed. But the things that we
put in place to capture short-term business
have made us get to that point where you
would say that we're thriving. Moscone
Center is offering a 25-percent discount
off of rentals, and San Francisco Tourism
Improvement District's one-fourth-percent
increase takes place in 2024, which
will offer additional discounts to Moscone
Center rentals. Moscone Center and San
Francisco Travel are also working on offsets
to security packages that groups traditionally
contract. Finally, we have great
deals for those that are signing multiyear
contracts at one time.
That being said, we're predicting a
2024 that's going to be significantly behind
where we would be averaging. But then we
start to grow once 2025 gets here, and then
we grow steadily from that year on.
EM: WHAT IS THE CITY DOING TO MAKE
PEOPLE FEEL SAFE AND KEEP EVENTS
SAFE?
NR: I don't think there's ever been a better
coordination between the city of San
Francisco, the mayor's office, the police
department and the DA's office in keeping
the city safe. There has been more of a
eventmarketer.com
NICOLE ROGERS, EXECUTIVE VP AND CHIEF SALES OFFICER, SAN FRANCISCO TRAVEL
realization in general as to how important
conventions, small contained meetings
and tourists are to the city, which I don't
think was there prior to the pandemic.
We've instituted programs with the
help of the city, including a Welcome
Ambassador program that's funded
through the city. It's managed by our
association, San Francisco Travel, and it
was originally put in place to welcome
people back to work from the pandemic.
It's now grown into a program that welcomes
our tourists, welcomes our conventioneers
and welcomes our locals. These
ambassadors are assigned to locations
across the city and can answer questions
about public transportation or translation
requests-we have 20 different languages
that are represented. If an event is going to
have restaurant events outside of Moscone
Center, we make sure that ambassadors
line the way to help guide them. San
Francisco is one of the safest cities, and the
beauty of it is that it's a walkable city.
We've also put in place what we call
a city pre-con for all conventions that are
at Moscone Center and for groups that
are staying within a hotel. We pull in all
our groups, from public works to our
police departments, to let them know that
these groups will be in town and so that
they know the schedule and will deploy
resources to the streets. Our [city] director
of facilities is on-call during events, and
we have dedicated street cleaning schedules
in place around the event.
I would say there are a lot of misconceptions
out there about how safe San
Francisco is. We were ranked the 15th
safest city in the world-and third in the
U.S.-by The Economist. We have very low
violent crime rates in comparison to other
cities. We do have petty crime and larceny;
that is our highest type of crime, and that's
what you hear a lot of stories about. But
since 2020, all the numbers have been
going down. Believe it or not, even larceny
and car break-ins, which is what we get
the most publicity about, are going down,
though that's still our highest type of crime
that is committed in the city. We hear what
everybody's saying. We know that these
are things that every community deals
with, but I feel we are going in the right
direction in almost every category.
EM: HOW IS THE CITY HELPING
MEETING PLANNERS OVERCOME
ATTENDEE PERCEPTIONS ABOUT
TRAVELING TO AND ATTENDING
EVENTS THERE?
NR: We've been providing links to our
partners throughout the country, our
associations, our corporate accounts, that
show what the facts are in our Recovery
Presentation. We work with our hotels,
the business improvement districts and
advocacy organizations to address the
perceptions that are not accurate. The
presentation offers real numbers on
homelessness or crime, for example, and
compares them to the other top cities in
the world. It's a little bit more targeted and
not a " look at how great San Francisco is "
presentation, but a, " Hey, here's the reality
of what's going on. " And underneath that,
it'll list the new initiatives that the mayor
has put in, and the success rates we've had.
WINTER 2024 EVENT MARKETER
17
http://www.eventmarketer.com
evm_december-2023

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